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Anti-Apple News Fest Continues

Just to keep the momentum going, the German responsible for consumer affairs has announced that he plans to publish a jointly authored “Charter for Consumers of Digital Media” in mid-February that will call for complete DRM interoperability. According to the FT the charter has been drawn up with a view of driving the issue onto the legislative agenda. As Iíve said before in this blog, if that was to happen Apple would find itself strongly backed in defence by record labels, movie studios and other content owners. Whatever the arguments in favour of DRM-Free distribution models, content owners are not prepared to wholeheartedly follow that course, particularly not without due consideration and experimentation first.

Also, if the EU gets involved it will probably focus on competition issues first, and though Apple has a strong presence in the digital music market, there is a strong argument that the EU digital music market is too nascent to force a level playing field without hurting market development.